


a silent princess

by breadofthewild



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breath of the Wild Spoilers, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Memories, Memory Loss, Post-Breath of the Wild, Post-Calamity Ganon, Recovered Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22413559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breadofthewild/pseuds/breadofthewild
Summary: The weight of lost memories rest on the hero and the princess.
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Kudos: 43





	a silent princess

**Author's Note:**

> aka i guess link looked at the pictures on the sheikah slate & was just like "i pretend i do not see it"

“I just want to know…do you really remember me?”

The hesitation in Link's gestures tells the princess all she needed to know.

It's hard to swallow the reality of it—to accept the truth she had been fearing for so long. Zelda's heart grows heavy. Rooted deep within, she feels a twinge of sadness.

A century she's waited to see the hero once again. Decades she fought all to hear his voice again, to see him alive. And yet—and yet, after all this time—the hero didn't remember the princess he risked his life for saving one hundred years ago.

But it wasn't as though she hadn't thought of this outcome. So Zelda seals her heart; buries her memories from a century ago to suppress a quiet frustration that courses through her.

It doesn't matter that the weight of their memories only rests on the princess now. She's been fighting for a long time. She's grown resilient; somehow, with something like this, she will manage.

"That is okay," Zelda musters. "It was a silly question."

Link sheathes the sword that seals the darkness and says nothing more. He has no words for the princess, no choice but to trust what she says. He has nothing now—no memory to rely on to close the distance between them, no duty to fulfill now that Calamity Ganon's been slain. Link feels guilt settle into his bones—to think, even after the battle's been won, he still couldn't remember the things that were apparently the most important to him.

All the nights across Hyrule pondering on what the princess was like came to Link's mind. No matter how many faces he met, towns he explored, towers he scaled, or shrines he conquered—not one of them sparked even a single memory from the long distant past. He had remembered nothing as he awoke in the Shrine of Resurrection, and when the king stood before him as a spirit and enlightened him of Hyrule's plight, Link still had not found anything familiar.

It didn't matter how many times Link uttered Zelda's name on his lips in an attempt to remember something. Even of the times the hero kneeled at the goddess statues scattered throughout the land and prayed—prayed for something to come to him, anything—nothing ever did. His last hope was that once the evil had been banished from the castle once and for all, and that the princess will have revealed herself to him, that he will hopefully recover what he has lost.

A breeze chills the two of them. Zelda's dress sways in the wind, the ends of it dirtied with soil and grit. She steals a glimpse of the ruined castle before her, a frown upon her face.

Atop the battlefield dampened with the Calamity's blood, a single petal flutters across the hero's line of vision.

And a voice, incomprehensible but delicate, rings in his head.

His eyes dart to the grass below him, and in the distance, he can see a lone flower blooming. A single Silent Princess thrives in the field, one petal having been blown away by the wind. The image is enchanting for some reason, the look of a flower he's seen only occasionally in the wild as he's come to learn that it's endangered. He lets his gaze rest on the bud, until—

Something pierces Link's vision. The Silent Princess sparks something within his mind, something he doesn’t quite understand. He groans in pain as his head starts to pound, and finally, something shifts. A connection starts to form.

There's a girl, a princess, a girl reaching for the heavens, a bright light—

The thud of his headache subsides. Link's eyes trail to Zelda.

_Zelda._

The name of the princess. The name of King Rhoam's daughter.

The name of his friend.

"I..." the hero stammers, fumbling over his words. Or rather, his thoughts.

The princess peers over her shoulder, quirking a curious eyebrow.

A wave of emotions flood through Link slowly as pieces of his fragmented memory start to fit together.

And finally, they fall into place.

"Zelda," mumbles Link, his memory scattered but there. It's there. "Zelda." The name rings true and firm on his lips, a name with an entirely new meaning. A name with a history. 

A name that feels like home.

Link strides over to Zelda in a few quick steps. Then, without so much as another word, he kneels before her. A hand rests over his heart, his head bowed in reverence.

“Link?” the princess asks softly, tentatively. She almost frowns at the sight of Link kneeling before her, something she hasn’t seen in so long, and she finds herself lying her hand atop his head gently. Nostalgia washes over her to the days of ceremonies and celebrations, how she and Link had always been the center of it all.

“I remember,” the hero says finally. "A hundred years ago." He attempts to collect his thoughts, all of them. All of the memories he made. All the times he had laughed and cried. All the times he was by the princess. 

He stands then, meeting Zelda’s eyes, and he looks at her with something she hadn’t noticed just moments before.

Eyes of a hero. Eyes of a savior.

Just like back then.

Link furrows his eyebrows, almost in frustration. “I’m sorry I forgot,” he starts, his gaze lowered, almost ashamed. He raises his eyes to meet Zelda’s once more, and the way he looks at her tells the princess that he truly is the person he was one hundred years ago again.

Zelda smiles, a small chuckle escaping her lips. Her heart opens just the tiniest bit.

“I see,” she says, nodding. She smiles to herself at the mere thought of it. Saving the world, and then getting caught up with personal affairs like this...it was so out of character for them both.

But the princess finds that she doesn’t mind it. It has, after all, been a hundred years.

They had time.


End file.
